[mad aetherist (OP)]

[HERE IS SOME WORDAGE FROM ANOTHER THREAD RE IVOR CATT & HIS ELECTRIC CURRENT IDEAS THAT I THORT DESERVED ITS OWN THREAD.]

I dont know much about fields & electricity, but i am thinking that u cannot get very far here if u dont read what Ivor Catt has to say (articles)(& youtube)(& google the Catt question).

Is there a link to the articles?

Here are a few, & youtube links at end.

http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x267.pdf
http://www.ptep-online.com/2016/PP-44-13.PDF
http://www.ivorcatt.com/1_1.htm
http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/07091.htm
http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/y7aiee.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.com/
http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/catanoi.htm
http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/08101.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.com/2698.htm
http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/
http://www.ivorcatt.com/em.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.com/28scan.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/981.htm
http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/wbbanbk1.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/2812.htm

[mad aetherist (OP)]

Catt's question is re a switch being turned on to let current flow from a battery at the west end of a circuit to a load at the east end along 2 parallel wires, an electric field etc develops tween the top wire & bottom wire, & the field advances west to east at the speed of light in air -- the question being where does the new charge on the bottom wire come from?

I dont understand Catt's question, but apparently it is difficult to answer.  Scientists fall into two groups, Westerners say that the charge comes from the west (ie the battery), & Southerners that say that the charge on the surface of the wire comes from inside the wire.

Westerners say that slowly drifting electrons (moving at say 1 mm/s) can create a current that travels at c if there are enough free electrons available which in copper there is. However even i (a non-scientist) can see that this is wrong. To transmit such a force at c electrons would have to themselves move at c across at least a small distance. But electrons cant move at c, they are particles & have mass. If electrons bunched shoulder to shoulder with zero space then praps they could transmit a psuedo-motion traveling at c, or praps if there was a very small space of say one millionth of an electron's dia, but i daresay that free electrons in copper enjoy a clear space of more like one million electron diameters (we dont know what an electron looks like, & we dont know the dia).

Southerners say that electrons migrate from inside the wire to the surface. But i doubt that that can do the trick, because (1) i think that there are no spare electrons inside a good conductor, any charge sits on the outside skin of the conductor, & (2) i think that the charge per m in the (say 1mm dia) wire would remain neutral overall, & hencely give a nett electric field of nearnuff zero.

But praps the electric field fights the Gaussian law & does indeed manage to result in a surface charge, ie on the bit of surface facing the other wire. I think that this sort of secondary charge rearrangement is compatible with Catt's fundamental theory.

But i suspect that a west to east charge (electron) motion is not compatible with Catts fundamental theory, even if that west to east current is merely a secondary effect (the Heaviside signal being the primary effect). I think that Catt reckons that there is no west to east current, ie there are 0.000 amperes. Circuits & transmission lines have energy fields not energy currents.

[mad aetherist (OP)]

[HERE IS SOME WORDAGE FROM ANOTHER  THREAD.]

I find it very difficult to think that you are against science if you write in this forum.

We get quite a lot of anti science posters. Some don’t understand it; some talk about ‘science’, usually hurt because no one will agree with their pet theory; some have religious reasons and disagree with heliocentrism, tectonics, evolution, etc.

if someone attempts to disagree with Einstein, his thread is moved to new theories.

Not strictly true, we have had quite a few discussions around Einstein's views, understanding has moved on since he originally put forward his ideas so there are areas of debate. Nor are we anti aether, just agnostic, because we don’t see clear evidence that it exists - you will find discussion here on LET (Lorentz Ether Theory) which gives the same experimental results as relativity, but a different explanation. However, most aetherists are putting forward posts which contradict the results of verified experiments and observations, so they are offering new theories. We (as a forum) are not saying they are wrong, just that we organise the forum with a separate category for new or alternative ideas. As long as folks are polite and don’t troll we are happy to debate, but time is limited and we give priority to the mainstream sections. All who answer questions here do so in their spare time, unpaid, but they have day jobs, projects etc so time is limited. So we can’t debate everything and we can't leave mainstream questions/statements unanswered because people wrongly assume no response = agreement. We would have a real problem of credibility if a schoolchild goes and tells teacher that tides are not due to the moon, but to giant whirlpools, they saw it on a TNS site, so it must be true.

PS - you don’t see many trolls because we weed them out asap, but we do get quite a few.

Appreciate if you let me know your findings on the odd post.

This one caught my eye as I skimmed through this thread:

Re censorship here is a copy of some wordage that i just posted on another thread re The Catt Question some of which details the suppression of Ivor Catt & his ideas.

http://www.ptep-online.com/2016/PP-44-13.PDF

I was puzzled by the way this question is presented. If you look at the first document in the list, which I’ve separated out from the rest, the question presented is as shown in the screenshot of the video further down and asks where the current in the bottom wire comes from.
He shows a battery on the left and describes the voltage on the bottom line as 0v. This would probably make any layman go ‘Ooo, good point, no voltage, no current’, but as anyone who has worked with electricity knows, voltage is relative so we could easily describe the top line as 0v and the bottom line as showing a voltage and ask where does the current in the top line come from.
The answer is simple, they both come from the same place. If you connect a battery across a circuit you will provide a push of electrons at one end of the battery and a pull at the other end.
 
There is another odd comment about source of charge ‘not from somewhere to the left because such charge would have to travel at the speed of light’. This is based on the old idea that charge in a wire was carried by physical movement of electrons from one end of the wire to the other. Invoking Heavyside doesn’t help because he didn’t know what we now know about the atomic structure of conductive metals and electron drift. A better way to envisage what happens is to imagine a tube full of marbles, push a marble in at one end and another one immediately falls out the other. No marbles travelled from end to end but a ‘unit of marble’ did - at very high speed.

The whole ‘problem’ here is based on a misunderstanding. It would appear that this is being passed around the internet as an example of a conspiracy of science mafia suppressing alternative views. Catt is not being suppressed, it’s just that he makes wrong assumptions and draws incorrect conclusions from them, so he is ignored. Example of bad science.

[mad aetherist (OP)]

Catt's question is re a switch being turned on to let current flow from a battery at the west end of a circuit to a load at the east end along 2 parallel wires, an electric field etc develops tween the top wire & bottom wire, & the field advances west to east at the speed of light in air -- the question being where does the new charge on the bottom wire come from?

The key to all of this is that the field advances at the speed of light in air (is this true)(i assume it is).
How do electrons know that the wires have air tween.
I agree with Catt that the energy of an electric current is contained in the field(s). The field is the current, ie the current is not the current. The electrons dont make the field tween the wires, it is the field that moves the electrons (i will have a think re this)(i think Catt infers that electrons dont move here)(ie there is no flow of electrons)(ie the ampere is false)(i will read up on Catt).

And the field of course travels in the air at the speed of light in air. But i see a problem here. There are two speeds of light. Firstly the speed of the advance of the electric field along the wires, ie from west to east. Secondly the speed of the electric field itself, ie from north to south. But praps i am wrong, praps there is no speed from north to south.

Catt says that a Heavyside signal goes from west to east, in the form of an unchanging slab of E*H energy current which is partly reflected back at changes in impedance or is absorbed by the terminating resistor. Catt draws the slab with leading edge at 90 deg to the wires. I suspect that if the electric field advances west to east at c, & at the same time crosses tween the wires at c, then the leading edge must be at 45 deg.
Or praps 2 leading edges of 2 half-slabs each at 45 deg trailing back from the top wire & from the bottom wire, meeting at a midpoint.
Or (as i mention in another thread)(photinos do they travel at more than c?), the speed of an electric field (north to south here)(not the speed of advance west to east) is praps as great as 5c. https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=75611.0
I will have a think re this. I dont fully understand Catt's theory.

[guest39538]

Wow ,  thats  a short list  .

[mad aetherist (OP)]

Wow,  thats  a short list .

I will work my way throo it, to try to better understand Catt, & i will erase any double entries (some small articles & videos are i think already in the bigger ones).

Today i am reading three papers by Forrest Bishop re Catt etc.
http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V14NO4PDF/V14N4BIS.pdf
http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_6554.pdf
http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_paperlink_7395.pdf

And one paper by Chew........ A RESOLUTION OF THE CATT ANOMALY CHAN RASJID KAH CHEW 6 May 2018
http://vixra.org/pdf/1810.0352v1.pdf

Forrest Bishop gave a presentation for Thunderbolts. It was advertised as.........
Introduction to and Implications of Ivor Catt's TEM Wave Electrodynamics
We, beginning with Ivor Catt and Oliver Heaviside, have removed “Electric Current” from the theory of electricity and replaced it with “Energy Current”, also called the TEM wave. In this picture, all apparently static fields are illusory effects of one or more such Energy Currents, always and only moving at the speed of light. By erasing electric current, along with its attendant contradictions and clutter, any theory that builds on that concept is also erased, replaced with a partly new, partly old, theory of TEM Wave Electrodynamics. This advanced theory is only concerned with transient behavior, as all behavior is transient.

[mad aetherist (OP)]

April 2013 Electronics World.
The End of the Road.
The Tony Wakefield Experiment.
By Ivor Catt.
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x343.pdf
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x3216.pdf

Tony Wakefield on the "Wakefield Experiment".
A challenge to Academia.
The "Wakefield Wakefield Experiments " one & two were both performed in non-laboratory conditions with the best equipment & materials available. The challenge is to ask that these experiments be repeated in a controlled laboratory environment by recognised professionals and the findings reported.
 
Ivor Catt claims that there is no such thing as a static charge in a capacitor and that the energy is moving at the speed of light (c) in a dielectric. Light travels 30 centimetres or 11.811 inches in 1 nanosecond in a vacuum .
Capacitors come is different shapes and sizes, making it difficult to show what is happening inside. By stretching out the capacitor to 2 very thin & long wires makes it very easy to measure the results. A coaxial cable provides the ideal method to produce a long capacitor and also minimise external interference.

A capacitor is a transmission line and a transmission line is a capacitor. The experiment required a termination into a infinitely long termination (matching coax of same impedance). This is not practical, but can be simulated by a terminating resistor of same impedance as the cable. This can be simplified with a metal film small resistor of value equal to the Coaxial impedance.

It was noted that minor imperfections in the components and test equipment used would result in slight overshoot / undershoot / ringing in the waveforms observed in the documented experiment. The length of the capacitor / coax used was 18 meters so that we could measure the times within a couple of nanoseconds accuracy and minimal losses. At the completion of the experiments I am in agreement with Ivor Catt that the results matched his prediction of some 40 years ago.

History.
I first met Ivor Catt in the late 1960's when we both worked for a new UK computer company. We both worked in the design and development of a new fast mini computer. I lost contact with Ivor for 50 years, but made contact a few years ago and studied some of his work via his website. I looked at the experiment that he was unable to do as the test equipment he had obtained would not function due to age. I was able to come up with a way to replace the equipment he had. After discussions I offered to perform the "Wakefield Experiment One". [We still have not met for 50 years, and now he is in Australia. I watched “Wakefield 1” on Skype. – Ivor Catt]

At a presentation to Newcastle University given by Ivor Catt, four Phd students came up with a different experiment that would verify the results of experiment one. This is now known as “ Wakefield Experiment Two “.
Linkedin  Tony Wakefield:    https://au.linkedin.com/in/tony-wakefield-4020723  18 July 2016

Tony failed to say (above) that before he did the experiment I told him  it would not be possible to publish the results in a peer reviewed journal.  Peers would not permit the suggestion that a charged capacitor did not have a stationary electric field. Professor Yakovlev refused to give me the names of the four students responsible for Wakefield 2
I wanted them to do the experiment and try to publish the results. Newcastle University could not afford to be involved in an experiment which showed that a charged capacitor did not have a stationary electric field. Neither will Newcastle do the next “Wakefield” experiments called EEB.
 – Ivor Catt

[evan_au]

Electrical signals in wires don't travel at c.

They typically travel at about 2/3c; the exact speed depends on the geometry, construction and materials of the wire and its insulation.

[mad aetherist (OP)]

Electrical signals in wires don't travel at c.
They typically travel at about 2/3c; the exact speed depends on the geometry, construction and materials of the wire and its insulation.

I dont know much about electricity & fields & circuits. I was wondering what effect plastic insulation has. And i had seen mention that a typical speed is 200,000 kmps (probly re wires with plastic insulation). And i suppose that most of Catt's stuff refers to DC, & i was wondering what happens with AC.

Anyhow i am still reading Bishop's & Catt's stuff. It looks like Zo is the key to almost everything in circuits (Zo is 377 ohm)(the impedance of vacuum).

Anyhow whether 200,000 kmps or 300,000 kmps free electrons drifting at say 1 mm/s cannot transmit these sorts of electric current speeds -- i estimate that electrons might give a current speed of say 0.5*0.5c/100,000 which is say 3/4 kmps -- where one 0.5 is an allowance for the inertia of an electron & the 0.5c is the say orbital speed of electrons & the 1/100,000 is the ratio of electron dia to ave clear gap tween free electrons.
I dont know whether drift speed (1 mm/s) is important -- but there are 750,000 mm in 3/4 km.
Hencely the Westerner's claim that electrons can transmit pulses of c (or even 0.66c) is an impossibility.

Plus thems little electrons might be smart but not smart enuff to know that the plastic must slow them or at least slow their little bump bump bump shenanigans.

Catt says that the current is always 0.000 amps & that any talk of speed is hencely redundant. Catt says that electrical energy is transmitted by the E*H field outside the wires, not some sort of VIR current inside the copper.
Bishop seems to explain all of this much better than Catt.
And electricity & impedance etc is starting to make more sense to me & i might take more interest in circuits etc from now on. Still reading.

Which reminds me. Cahill had a bit of trouble with his coaxial cable or optical cable MMXs or Zener diode stuff. It might have concerned IAAAD.  And Catt's stuff means that a half of the voltage in a circuit is available for IAAAD when the switch is closed.  So, Catt has identified one example of IAAAD, probly the only valid instance of IAAAD in science (albeit a semi-IAAAD).  And of course real IAAAD is impossible, so what we have here might be better called a sort of faux or psuedo or quasi semi-IAAAD.

Anyhow Catt should get a Nobel (praps shared with Bishop & Wakefield).

[mad aetherist (OP)]

GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Catt Anomaly. First described in Wireless World, aug81. When a voltage step travels down a two wire transmission line, more and more negative charge must appear on the lower line to terminate the electric flux. This has to travel from the left at the speed of light, but in that case the electrons have infinite mass. p31. [My 1996 book The Catt Anomaly pub. Westfields, is on my website www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/ ]

Characteristic impedance. If the front end of a long coaxial cable behaves like a 50W resistor, then we say that the line has a characteristic impedance of 50W. It would be more accurate if we called it "Characteristic resistance", but we don't. p24.

Energy current. p14, p28 The counterpoint to electric current. A phrase used only twice by Heaviside late last century as the foundation of his Theory H, in which the cause is energy current, or the Poynting Vector, guided along between the conductors at the speed of light, and causing the electric current and charge in the conductors, which he called "obstructors". Energy current was never mentioned again until Catt discovered it. Previous Heaviside savants Josephs, Gossick, Mercer, all of whom I have met, overlooked it. The Poynting Vector is an early version of it, and it later became the TEM Wave.

TEM Wave. Transverse Electromagnetic Wave. Fig5, p2 This neglected concept is the central feature of Catt's theory of electromagnetism. Conventionally, the TEM wave has a B component in the x direction, an E component in the y direction, and travels forward in the z direction at the speed of light, 300,000 km/s (in vacuo).
Under Theory C, the TEM wave is the only physically possible expression of electric field and of magnetic field. The two fields are indissolubly linked in the ratio 377W (in vacuo). Further, such a field cannot be stationary. It can only travel at the speed of light. Stationary electric and magnetic fields do not exist. Fields travelling at other than the speed of light do not exist.

Theory C. First disclosed In Wireless World, dec80. The third in the sequence (p29) of fundamental theories of electromagnetism. C stands for Catt. Catt realised that when Theory H reversed the causality between electric current and field, it led to the disappearance of the need for current and charge. This excision resolves the Catt Anomaly (p31). p12

Theory H. The second in the series of theories. H stands for Heaviside. "We reverse this; the current in the wire is set up by the energy transmitted through the medium around it ..."

Theory N. The conventional theory of electromagnetism which has ruled for a century since the suppression of Oliver Heaviside and his supporters. A battery yearns to send electric current down wires. If it succeeds, this results in electric field, or flux, between the wires, and magnetic field, or flux, surrounding the current in the wires.

Transverse Electromagnetic Wave. See TEM Wave.   

[mad aetherist (OP)]

A DIFFICULTY IN ELECTROMAGNETIC THEORY
by Arnold Lynch and Ivor Catt
 
We seem to have two different systems of electrical theory almost but not quite independent of each other. The difficulty has existed for more than a hundred years but appeared unimportant until the last twenty years or so. ….
….
P2/2
Now we describe a problem which combines the two types of theory and shows the difficulty mentioned in the title of this paper. It arose about twenty years ago when fast-operating silicon chips were connected to one another. We idealise the problem slightly. Imagine a coaxial transmission line terminated by a matched load at the far end; and for simplicity let it be evacuated, and of very low resistance. Apply a step voltage to its input; a wave travels along it with the velocity of waves in free space. So after a time a current begins to flow in the terminating load; that is, electrons start to move through it. The problem is - where did they come from? Not from the input, because electrons have finite mass and so they cannot travel at the velocity of waves in free space. (Remember that we are considering a step voltage, not an alternating one.)

One of us sent the problem to various people who might have been expected to provide an answer, and the responses were mainly of two kinds (ref. 1):
(1) that the wave causes radial movements in the line as it passes over them, and that electrons displaced in this way at the far end make up the current; or
(2) that electrons move along the line, with velocity less than the wave, but push other electrons on in front of them, keeping pace with the wave.

This problem was mentioned in the Institution's Wheatstone Lecture last December. The lecturer said that electrons in a metal travel only slowly but that they can transmit a fast electromagnetic wave by "nudging" their neighbors ("nudging" was his word for it).
Our comments on this are: each atom in a metal contributes a few free electrons, so there are rather more electrons than atoms and therefore they are spaced from each other by a little less than the spacing of the atoms - say about a tenth of a nanometre. The size of an electron is not known, but it is presumably much smaller than an atomic nucleus, which is about a millionth of a nanometre. That is, the electrons are spaced apart by more than 100,000 times their diameter. So they cannot deliver a nudge without moving, and they cannot move instantaneously because of their mass..
.
REFERENCES
1.   I. Catt, "The Catt Anomaly" (Westfields Press, St. Albans), 1996
2.   A. C. Lynch, "Half the electron", Engineering Science and Education Journal, 6, pp 215-220 (1997)
Dr. Arnold Lynch is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Dept. of Electronic Engineering, University College, London; correspondence can be addressed to him at 8 Heath Drive, Potters Bar, Herts, EN6 1EH

[mad aetherist (OP)]

Energy Current.
Oliver Heaviside, who had the advantage of being born later, had a better grasp of electromagnetics than did Faraday or Maxwell, and his view of how a digital signal travels is well worth study[1].

Whereas the conventional approach to the subject today is to concentrate on the electric current in wires, with some additional consideration of voltages between wires, Heaviside concentrates primarily on what he calls 'energy current', this being the electromagnetic field which travels in the dielectric between the wires. In the quotation below, Heaviside's phrase, "We reverse this;" point to the great watershed in the history of electromagnetic theory
between the 'etherials', who with Heaviside believe that the signal is an 'energy current' which travels in the dielectric between the wires, and
the 'practical electricians', who like John T. Sprague believe that the signal is an electric current which travels down copper wires, and that if there is a 'field' in the space between the wires, this is only the result of what is happening in the conductors.

Heaviside wrote (Ref.22);
"Now in Maxwell's theory there is the potential energy of the displacement produced in the dielectric parts by the electric force, and there is the kinetic or magnetic energy of the magnetic induction due to the magnetic force in all parts of the field, including the conducting parts. They are supposed to be set up by the current in the wire. We reverse this; the current in the wire is set up by the energy transmitted through the medium around it...."

The importance of Heaviside's phrase, "We reverse this;" cannot be overstated for digital designers. It points to the watershed between the 'practical electricians', who have held sway for the last half century, promulgating their theory - which we shall call "Theory N", the Normal Theory: that the cause is electric currents in wires and electromagnetic fields are merely an effect - and the 'ethereals', who believe what we shall call "Theory H": that the travelling field is the cause, and electric currents are merely an effect of these fields.

The situation is of course obscured by the many who claim that it is immaterial which causes which. However, experience shows that it is damaging to ignore causality when trying to assemble reliable digital systems.

[mad aetherist (OP)]

Before continuing with Theory H, we shall quote one early Theory N man, a 'practical electrician' named John T. Sprague. In his book, ref.23, he ridicules Theory H;

"A new doctrine is becoming fashionable of late years, devised chefly in order to bring the now important phenomena of alternating currents under the mathematical system. It is purely imaginary ... based on Clerk-Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light, itself correctly described by a favourable reviewer as 'a daring stroke of scientific speculation,' alleged to be proved by the very little understood experiments of Hertz, and supported by a host of assumptions and assertions for which no kind of evidence is offered; but its advocates call it the 'orthodix' theory.

"This theory separates the two factors of electricity ..., and declares that the 'current', the material action, is carried by the 'so-called conductor' (which according to Dr Lodge contains nothing, not even an impulse, and according to Mr. O. Heaviside is to be regarded as an obstructor), but the energy leaves the 'source' (battery or dynamo) 'radiant in exactly the same sense as light is radiant', according to Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson, and is carried in space by the ether: that it 'swirls' round (cause for such swirling no one exaplains) and finds its way to the conductor in which it then produces the current which is apparently merely an agency for clearing the ether of energy which tends to 'choke' it, while the conductor serves no other purpose than that of a 'waste pipe' to get rid of this energy ...

"This much, however, is certain; that if the 'ether' or medium, or di-electrics carry the energy, the practical electrician must not imagine he can get nature to do his work for him; the ether, &c., play no part whatsoever in the calculations he has to make; whether copper wire is a conductor or a waste pipe, that is what he has to provide in quantity and quality to do the work; if gutta percha, &c., really carry the energy, he need not trouble about providing for that purpose; he must see to it that he provides it according to the belief that it prevents loss of current. In other words, let theoretical mathematicians devise what new theories they please, the practical electrician must work upon the old theory that the condctor does his work and the insulation prevents its being wasted. Ohm's law (based on the old theory) is still his safe guide.

"For this reason I would urge all practical electricians, and all students who desire to gain a clear conception of the actual operation of electricity, to dismiss from their minds the new unproved hypotheses about the ether and the abstract theory of conduction, and to completely master the old, the practical, and common sense theory which links matter and energy together..."

Sprague accurately described Theory N, which has been used in practice by virtually every digital designer, with disastrous results. They must now turn to Theory H to get them out of their difficulties.

[mad aetherist (OP)]

In his book (ref.24), J. A. Fleming argued for Theory H;
"It is important that the student should bear in mind that, although we are accustomed to speak of the current as flowing in the wire in one direction or the other, this is a mere form of words. What we call the current in the wire is, to a very large extent, a process going on in the space or material outside the wire. Just as we familiarly speak of the sun rising and setting, when the effect is really due to the rotation of the earth, so the ordinary language we use in speaking about electric currents flowing in conductors retains the form impressed upon it by older and erroneous assumptions as to their nature."

The reader will have surmised by now that "energy current", the primary signal which travels down the dielectric from one logic gate to the next, has an amplitude equal to the Poynting vestor, E x H.

We shall end this qualitative discussion with some of the more important quotations from Heaviside, the man who a century ago brilliantly used the concept of energy current to solve telegraph problems which closely parallel present-day problems in high speed digital logic.

Heaviside wrote (ref.22);
"It becomes important to find the paths along which the energy is being transmitted. First define the energy-current at a point to be the amount of energy transferred in unit time across unit area perpendicular to the direction of transmission ... This is true universally, irrespective of the nature of the medium as to conductivity, capacity and permeability ... and is true in transient as well as in steady states. A line of energy-current is perpendicular to the electric and the magnetic force, and is a line of pressure, We here give a few general notions.

"Return to our wire from London to Edinburgh with a steady current from the battery in London The energy is poured out of the battery sideways into the dielectric at a steady rate ... Most of the energy is transmitted parallel to the wire nearly ... But some of the outer tubes go out into space to an immense distance ... If there is an instrument in the circuit at Edinburgh, it is worked by energy that has travelled wholly through the dielectric, then finding its way into the instrument, ... where it enters ... and is there dissipated ...

"In a circular circuit, with the battery at one end of a diameter, its other end is the neutral point; the lines of energy-current are distributed symmetrically with respect to the diameter.

"On closing the battery circuit (i.e. switching the logic output) there is an immediate rush of energy into the dielectric ..." EDIT BY MAD AETHERIST ON 10APRIL2019 -- NO, SEE #25 -- THERE IS NO STATIC ELECTRICITY, ALL ELECTRICITY IS AN ENERGY CURRENT IN THE DIELECTRIC MOVING AT C/N AT ALL TIMES IN ALL PLACES -- THE CLOSING MERELY ALLOWS THAT SIGNAL TO CONTINUE THROO RATHER THAN BEING REFLECTED.

[mad aetherist (OP)]

The Theories
A number of different dualisms obtain within or in the vicinity of electromagnetic theory as it is developing. the student needs to be warned against thinking that only one dualism is involved, and that he is merely seeing different expressions of the same dualism. The mutually distinct dualisms include:

wave-particle dualism

Theory N - Theory H (ref.18a)

The Rolling Wave - The Heaviside Signal (ref.18b p51)

It will be seen later that one of these is in fact a three-way split between Theory N, Theory H and Theory C.

Historical development.
The transition from classical, wireless-based electromagnetic theory, loosely equivalent to Theory N, to one of the preferred theoretical positions for the digital electronic designer, Theory H or Theory C, is via a complex development shown in Figure 63.

[opportunity]

Is this a question about watching "lightning", like in the sky, seeing how it arcs out?

It really depends on the impedance in the medium, right?

[chris]

Electrical signals in wires don't travel at c.

They typically travel at about 2/3c; the exact speed depends on the geometry, construction and materials of the wire and its insulation.

What's the physics of that, @evan_au ?

[mad aetherist (OP)]

Is this a question about watching "lightning", like in the sky, seeing how it arcs out?
It really depends on the impedance in the medium, right?

I think that Catt & Co are talking re circuits & transmission lines & capacitors, with DC batteries (dunno re AC).
They say that electric power is due to external energy fields travelling at the speed of light in the dielectric surrounding & tween the conductors, & that electricity etc aint due to an internal current in the copper.
And the current is always 0.000000000000 amperes, ie there is no speed of any electron current & there is no speed of any electron drift (at least not any nett speed of drift)(not sure).

And the properties of the external energy field re a pair of conductors depends strongly on the impedance of space in vacuum (ie Zo which equals 120π ohm which is 377 ohm). And amperage does not exist.

But re natural lightning & laboratory lightning i daresay that this is a different thing to Catt's stuff, & i think that lightning involves ions & has amperage etc, & the associated electric fields etc are secondary whereas in circuits the electric fields etc are primary (fundamental).

[mad aetherist (OP)]

April 2013 Electronics World ---  The End of the Road --- The Tony Wakefield Experiment --- By Ivor Catt.
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x343.pdf                                   http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x3216.pdf
A Change in Theory.
In my article entitled "Displacement Current" in Wireless World in December 1978 i pointed out that when a battery charges a capacitor, the energy is introduced into the capacitor at the speed of light.  Once inside the capacitor, there is no mechanism for the energy to slow down.

The change in theory for a charged capacitor from stationary electric field to two electromagnetic fields travelling at the speed of light is an introduction to my general theory, that there is no such thing as a stationary field, electric or magnetic.  Not only in the case of a charged capacitor, but always, any apparently stationary electric or magnetic field is in fact the superposition of two E*H electromagnetic fields travelling in opposite directions.  Occam's Razor supports this assertion.  In the case of the charged capacitor, the two magnetic fields are equal and opposite.  They cancel, so an instrument cannot detect them.  This gives the impression that a charged capacitor only has electric field, although the energy delivered to it when charging is a TEM wave of E*H energy current.  The delivered energy is conventionally daid to have half its energy in the electric field and half in its magnetic field, travelling at the speed of light.

In Electronics World, January 2011, page 20, i again proved from first principles that such a EM wave can only travel at the speed of light for the dielectric, ±1/√(µɛ).  It cannot travel slower.  In our case the only possible velocity remains c, because it should be well known that when two pulses travel through each other in a coaxial cable they do not slow down.  Rather, I²R  losses disappear.

I wonder how is it that heat losses disappear in fully charged capacitors (ie in co-axial cables & in open circuits acting as capacitors).  Praps heat losses in copper are all due to magnetic field, not electric field.  If the magnetic field going left in a copper wire cancels the magnetic field going right then the nett apparent field must be zero. Magnetic fields might move or vibrate the electrons & protons in copper.  I reckon that it is the protons that cause energy loss -- ie protons are vibrated by changing magnetic fields, giving heat gain & then heat loss in the copper.

Somehow electric fields dont cause energy loss, or at least apparently static electric fields dont cause energy loss.  I dont understand this stuff.  Still thinking.

When capacitors are charging or discharging (eg when circuits are operating) the Heaviside slab(s) of E*H might well be constant (as claimed by Catt), but i reckon that the H component might be changing in time or location or both (whatever that might mean), in which case protons in the copper are vibrated (giving losses)(& giving resistance to the Heaviside wave).

[mad aetherist (OP)]

............There is another odd comment about source of charge ‘not from somewhere to the left because such charge would have to travel at the speed of light’. This is based on the old idea that charge in a wire was carried by physical movement of electrons from one end of the wire to the other. Invoking Heaviside doesn’t help because he didn’t know what we now know about the atomic structure of conductive metals and electron drift. A better way to envisage what happens is to imagine a tube full of marbles, push a marble in at one end and another one immediately falls out the other. No marbles travelled from end to end but a ‘unit of marble’ did - at very high speed.....................

The falling out would not be immediate, that would need IAAAD -- just a slip of the tongue -- saved later by saying at very high speed.  So what would that very high speed be?
For marbles the apparent speed would be a little slower than the speed of sound in glass -- if the marbles were cubes instead of spheres then it might be equal to the speed of sound in glass.

For electrons this little thort-X gets complicated.  Imagine a tube full of electrons, push an electron in at one end & another electron immediately falls out the other -- no electrons travelled from end to end but a ‘unit of electron’ did - at very high speed.

If it were possible to have electrons touching then the speed of the shock-front-pulse might be c if the electrons have no mass (ie no inertia), because if no mass then no strain (the electrons retain their shape)(what is their shape?)(a sphere?)(a doughnut?)(a spinning doughnut, ie a pseudo sphere?).  However if at the end of the tube (or anywhere along the tube) the electrons have to do something (ie make a field)(ie supply an external force), then that force must require some sort of strain in the shapes of the electrons forming the train, in which case the speed of the pulse must be less than c (eg c/2)(naively). In addition if the electrons have mass (& they do) then that must result in its own strain (due to internal inertial force), in which case the two sets of strains would be additive (eg giving c/2/2)(naively). 

And if electrons in that tube are not touching (ie if clear gaps) then what happens to the above c/2/2?   The gaps will need their own kind of strain, to create the needed increase in the repulsive Coulomb forces tween electrons -- the size of the strain depending of the size of the gap -- & naively the speed of the pulse might then reduce to say c/2/2/100 which is 750 kmps (here the electrons are constrained in a tube) 
My earlier guesstimate for not in a tube was 0.75 kmps.
The bottom line is that the speed of an electron pulse be it free electrons or bound or constrained in a tube cant be at c or anywhere near c.